Marching with pride for immigrant rights

I WAS a senior in high school when California Proposition 187 was passed by a shocking majority of voters. Nearly 59 percent of Californians found it acceptable that undocumented immigrants should not be able to receive health care--including emergency room care to save a life--or a public education in this state.

Public schools were to be required to demand documentation of a child's legal status before enrolling them in school. To their credit, educators overwhelmingly rejected this, seeing the insanity of refusing to educate the future generation of American citizens.

Additionally, they recognized that school-age children shouldn't be punished for circumstances entirely beyond their control--children don't "choose" for themselves to be immigrants, but come along with their immigrant parents who themselves are forced by the economic pressures in their own countries to come looking for better work and a better life in a place where they must learn a new language and be separated from their families and culture of origin.

Though I wasn't aware of it then, I've since learned that there were organized demonstrations against Prop 187 by immigrant rights advocates before its passage. But what I do remember is that the student immigrant community around me at Mission Bay High School erupted after its passage.

The day after the vote, hundreds of my peers--most of them immigrants, but some of them allies in solidarity--walked out of class and demonstrated in front of the school. Many had flags from their country of origin, showing their refusal to denounce their own cultural heritage--alongside American flags demonstrating their right to call themselves Americans as much as anyone else. After all, we are a country of immigrants.

Some students who also opposed Prop 187 didn't walk out--perhaps because they were concerned about the mark on their attendance records, perhaps because they were concerned about accusations from outsiders that they "just didn't want to be in class." Or perhaps, like me, they weren't sure if they were supposed to be there.

Although I am an immigrant also, I knew that Prop 187 wasn't meant to target me. The law was a clear racist attack on the "excessive number of Latino immigrants" in this country, in spite of the fact that immigrants come here to work, in spite of the fact that most Latinos are in fact descended from the original natives of this land, and of course in spite of the fact that economic pressures created by pro-business and anti-worker U.S. policies like NAFTA (passed just 11 months before Prop 187) force immigrants to separate themselves from their families and travel north into hostile territory for sub-living wages in the first place.

I bring all of this up not only as a history refresher, but also because I am convinced, in retrospect, that it was the example of my brave peers who walked out of school in November 1994--and the subsequent and swift overturning of the racist law in the courts before the law was ever enforced--that inspired me to become an activist.

IT WAS November 2008 before I finally became an activist and demonstrated in the streets for civil rights for the first time.

I had joined the No on 8 campaign in October with reluctance, but primarily because of laziness. The work of calling voters to vote no on Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage was somebody else's job, I thought. I'd rather be sleeping, reading a book, watching television or relaxing in some other way than phone banking two times a week to urge voters to do what was obviously the right thing--refuse to let Californians to take gay couples' rights away.

But friends at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego were very persuasive: My help was urgently needed. So finally I volunteered.

Without being involved at that level, I might not have participated in the protest against Prop 8 in San Diego on November 15, 2008. And had I not done that, my story might be quite different today--I might be spending a lot more of that much-desired time on the couch than I do now.

But I regret not participating in protests at other times when I wish I had. I also didn't join in when my peers spontaneously, and correctly, walked out in outrage after hearing of the verdict that acquitted the police officers who beat Rodney King on April 29, 1992. I decided after the experience of protest after Prop 8 that not only was I going to be an activist, but I would never regret "not showing up" again.

Demonstrating on May 29 in Phoenix against SB 1070--a law that will require Arizona police to demand proof of legal resident status from any immigrant about whom they find "reasonable suspicion" to be an immigrant, effectively writing racial profiling into Arizona law--somewhat completes the circle for me.

In 1994, when Prop 187 passed, I was disgusted and horrified by the law, but I didn't "show up" to demonstrate my opposition to it. I wasn't part of the solution. This weekend, when 70,000 to 100,000 people demonstrated against SB 1070 to demand that Obama stop the bill before it goes into effect, I was part of something.

I caravanned with 12 other members of the San Diego Alliance for Marriage Equality (SAME) to Phoenix. We were among an estimated 100 people who traveled from San Diego. We bore our pride flags and chanted, "Arizona, let's face this: 1070 is racist!" and "Gay, straight, Brown, white--All deserve the same rights!" and "Gays con migrantes. ¡Adelante, adelante!"

The demand of the march was that President Obama, who has called the law "misguided," stop the implementation of SB 1070 before it starts--which he has the power to do since only the federal government has legal authority to enforce immigration law. As protests continue, we hope that other members of the LGBT community will also join us in open solidarity and help us demonstrate that San Diego is an organized and unified community against draconian and offensive bills like SB 1070.

MANY IN the LGBT community are openly opposing SB 1070. The Community Leadership Council recently voted to release a statement that not only recognizes that one out of five San Diego residents were not born in this country, but also asserts:

We believe in rational, practical approaches to enforcement that do not tear families apart, as well as clear, humane and increased pathways to citizenship for new immigrants, and a clear pathway to citizenship for the more than 12 million unauthorized immigrants and families currently in the nation. As such, we also oppose the passage of SB 1070 by the Arizona State Legislature.

As LGBT people, we must never forget that all communities who are targeted for oppression from bigoted laws are intermeshed. Many LGBT people are immigrants, or have family members or partners who are immigrants and who are affected by immigration law. For them, the struggle for LGBT rights is only one of at least two civil rights causes that directly affect and concern them.

The right would love for us to forget that we are all, in fact ,members of one diverse community--certainly it's easier for them to divide and conquer us that way.

Second, solidarity matters. Even those of us who are not directly targeted by immigration laws like SB 1070 have reason to join in the protests against them, and in the demand for equal treatment of immigrants. The fact is that when immigrant rights activists see openly LGBT people fighting alongside them for their cause, they are forced also to see that we are members of their community, as much as they are members of ours.

Third, there is really a common thread to be seen between the struggle for LGBT equality and the equal treatment of immigrants in this country. LGBT and immigrant people are two classes of Americans who aren't offered equal protections under the law, though we contribute equal work. Just as so many LGBT people struggle with whether it is safe to "come out" in our workplaces, immigrant workers too are forced to work in the shadows--afraid of losing their jobs if outed as undocumented workers.

And as Max Disposti pointed out at a recent forum organized by North County LGBT Coalition on continuing the fight for equality, we share another commonality: Just as so many LGBT people assert that their sexual preference was in no way a "choice," neither is being an immigrant of illegal status a "choice."

People who emigrate from their countries of origin looking for work can hardly be considered to have had much of a "choice" in their originating circumstances, nor do they choose the laws that govern immigration in this country. Instead, the "choice" is on the part of the U.S. government to treat immigrant workers less worthy of dignity and equal rights than American-born workers--and to forget that the entire history of this country is based on immigration, both legal and not.

First published at the GLTNN Web site.